


cinders

by shiveringshadows



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Character Study, Coda to Chapter 35, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 04:16:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10586241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiveringshadows/pseuds/shiveringshadows
Summary: This is only a distraction.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to help me deal with my personal trauma.  
> My intention was to portray Sebastian as an abuser. Ciel's perspective is a reflection of my own as a survivor.

They return to Phantomhive Manor late that night.

Ciel has clung to Sebastian’s neck the whole way from Baron Kelvin’s manor to his own, holding tight enough to crush—at least, if Sebastian were a human man.

“Young master,” Sebastian says in his ear. The huge door that opens into the Great Hall, strewn with debris, creaks familiarly with Sebastian’s gentle push, and Ciel knows what he is going to say before he says it: “We have arrived at the manor.”

But Ciel does not loosen his grip even a little. As they make their way through the hall and up the stairs, he keeps his head buried against Sebastian’s neck, and his hands claw at Sebastian’s coat to keep himself from visibly shaking. He is not in the mood to see the damage done to his home from everything that happened tonight. ( _Home:_ a word Ciel has not used to describe this place since before 'that month.') The servants make themselves known by their footsteps and their voices, and Sebastian silences their questions and exclamations, but even knowing that they are alive and well enough does not make Ciel feel any better. He had not worried about them, or Elizabeth, for a single moment to begin with.

Sebastian sets him down once they reach the privacy of the washroom just off the master bedroom. He guides him so that he will sit, and helps him remove his clothes while the bath fills with water.

They are both filthy—Sebastian with blood, Ciel with vomit and sweat and saliva and salt from lukewarm, now-dried tears.

As Sebastian strips his ruined gloves off and tosses them into the haphazard pile with his young master’s clothes, he notes the vacancy of his eyes—as though he is not even there. In truth, Ciel does not feel quite there. He understands where he is, and that he is in his own manor now, in the washroom; but he cannot shake the feeling of being captive again. His eyelids sting and his face feels doughy.

Sebastian helps him into his bath when it is full of clear, sparkling water. It is untoward, perhaps, to touch him with his bare hands, to ease him into the water with his own naked skin, but Ciel does not seem to notice and it gives Sebastian a horrible little thrill to do it—his skin crawls with hunger and want, but his restraint is so practiced and careful from the last three years that he does not tremble even a little. He does not allow himself to think those thoughts just yet: the soul encased in this flesh is not quite what he wants just now, although its sweet-smelling anguish is palpable in the air.

Ciel is still as Sebastian scrubs the filth and the salt of sweat from his body, deathly still, but he is pliant: Sebastian is allowed to wash him, to help him to stand up and out of the water again, and to dry him with ease. He has perhaps never encountered Ciel this physically malleable, and it is curious to him. Sebastian watches his young master’s face as he wipes it with a clean, damp cloth and begins to dress him again. And Ciel does not speak, not even to tell him off, but of course he notices his stare.

What Sebastian notices is that he seems more alert now that he is clean. He rises from the floor in front of his little master again and turns to fill a cup with cold water. With long fingers curling into his palm, he coaxes him to the sink: “Young master, let us rinse your mouth.” He says it smilingly, suave even at times like these. “Surely the after-taste of vomit is hardly enjoyable.”

Ciel draws in a breath and sighs—he is tired, too tired to fight Sebastian, and this is the first sign he has shown of it since they returned.

The floor is unbearably cold on his toes, and his nightshirt is hardly adequate to keep him warm, but he takes the few steps needed to reach the sink. Sebastian cups his chin with his bare hand, and the fingers grip his jaw as he brings the cup to his mouth. But Ciel twists away, cringing with remembered trauma and reaching out to strike him on the arm as hard as he can. “ _Damn you_ ,” he snarls, “I can do it myself.”

Sebastian says nothing to that; the cup wobbles from the force of the blow but does not lose even a drop of water. He hands it over. Ciel leans over the basin and swishes the water around in his mouth, then spits, and he does it twice more before he thrusts the cup back into Sebastian’s waiting hands. He brushes his teeth quickly, his anger withering, and retreats to the safety of his bedroom.

Sebastian is there in a moment to bundle him into bed, pulling the sheets up in a flourish over him. Even with the most trivial things he cannot help showing off, and it annoys Ciel. But right now, silence seems terrifying—and so he crawls to the edge of his bed, standing on his knees, reaching out with the hand Sebastian had held when he first appeared before him.

“Sebastian,” he whispers. He hoped that, as his lips formed the shape of it, the word would not tremble on its way out; and to his surprise and pleasure—which feels objectively wrong, in light of everything they have just come away from—it does not. He is no louder when he continues, but he is a little bolder: “Stay here. It’s an order.”

Sebastian takes his hand, just as he had back then, and gives him the same beautiful, sinister smile that has become so familiar to him. He bends his head over the little hand and kisses it gently in a show of sincerity and fealty which Ciel does not think is really there, but which he will accept anyway—there is nothing else for him to hold onto. “Yes, my lord.”

Ciel has given plenty of orders tonight; and as Sebastian removes his shoes, he thinks this one feels like the most foolish.

 

His young master is like a little boy again, Sebastian thinks as he joins him on the bed a moment later, kneeling just as his master does and gathering him up in his arms. Ciel is as wounded as he was at the beginning, all his scars torn open by what happened tonight at Baron Kelvin’s manor, fresh blood bubbling at the ragged mouths. And the look of helplessness on his face is so sweet, so pure, Sebastian cannot help but pause to drink it in before he presses the boy flush against himself, his arm sliding up his back to hold him in place. Perhaps this will provide some comfort; it is not such a bad thing for the growth of a soul if wielded correctly.

Ciel’s heart flutters anxiously against him, but he clings anyway, desperate for something solid. He feels Sebastian’s hand pass over his shoulder blades, petting him as though he really were a little watchdog. He screws his eyes shut and focuses on the sensation in the hopes that it will help, but it is not enough. “Sebastian,” he says again.

In mute understanding, Sebastian shifts to sit and draws his young master into his lap, parting his narrow legs so that Ciel straddles him. As he lays back—deliciously, against the pillows his master sleeps with every night—Ciel leans over him, following him. He takes the initiative to pluck the buttons of his vest and shirt open, and his fingers trail down and down with a steadiness and confidence Sebastian did not expect, but finds alluring all the same. Even Ciel’s expression has changed, steely and cold where it was abject, childish, just moments ago.

He wonders if he should not thank the Baron Kelvin for this.

Ciel is not normally moved by lust—at times Sebastian wonders if he even fully comprehends it, young as he is—and rarely indulges in it; but death works something strange in humans that, like most of their emotions, Sebastian cannot properly grasp. That humans have a desire to do something so closely associated with creating life in the aftermath of its loss is only a technical explanation that he has heard once or twice, and does not apply here at all, at all: even if Sebastian had given himself a woman’s shape; or Ciel Phantomhive had been born a girl; there would be no need to worry about _that_.

Sebastian cannot understand Ciel’s emotions no matter how he studies them, cannot feel them the way Ciel feels them. But he can touch them, absorb the gist of them through the skin as he runs his hands up and down the length of Ciel’s torso under his shirt, rigid with ribs on either side. They fill his frame to spilling over, so much so that Sebastian can almost imagine he _does_ feel them himself, without the consequences of their curse. But he has no frame of reference for them, having never had the capacity for them to begin with—he has only the void of hunger, a gaping need. He has never once been full.

Ciel—who is now wetting his lips and shifting around, getting as comfortable as he can and shutting his ears to the roar of the fire he set to Kelvin’s manor which continues to roll through his skull—has had the privilege of the experience. But not since he has known Sebastian. It has made the emptiness that much emptier, the darkness that much more profound than Sebastian’s—and even Sebastian can understand this, if he graces it with some thought: after all, Sebastian cannot miss what he does not know, and his young master has known it intimately.

Ciel makes his delicate hands into fists on Sebastian’s abdomen and leans forward on them. He rocks his hips slowly against Sebastian’s, then harder, a little more desperately. He stops suddenly and eases up off of him to kneel over him. “Sebastian,” he whispers, “help me.”

The night shirt comes off, the underclothes are disregarded. Sebastian’s hands spider up hungrily from his bare waist, leaving cold chills in their wake, gooseflesh. Ciel suppresses the shudder and slides his own hands down, to the buttons of his butler’s trousers; he works them open as deliberately as he had the shirt’s.

* * *

Ciel makes a point of not looking at Sebastian—makes a point of making sure Sebastian does not look at him: it is one thing for his blind hands to roam, encroaching upon every bit of skin they can reach. It is another to give Sebastian access to _himself_ , to let him too far inside. Sebastian would utterly pollute everything there—he knows this instinctively. Ciel knows, too, that there is nothing at all in him that has been completely untouched by evil, nothing wholly clean. But he wants something for himself, something Sebastian cannot take from him.

Sebastian revels in his pain, tries to drown himself in it, to press as hard as he can on the bruises until he becomes an indelible part of it. He makes no attempts to hide it: he never has to begin with. And besides that, it is hard to keep their faces out of his mind—not just the empty stares of the children that Kelvin had had his circus troupe kidnap, but Freckles’, too, in those last seconds. He had not looked, but he heard the sickening snap of bones, and the thud as she slumped to the ground. It is difficult not to imagine what Sebastian did to her.

But Sebastian’s oil-slicked fingers (he had seemed to pull the little vial out of the air, like a magician; showing off once again) are overwhelming, and soon it is easier to not think at all.

For Ciel, this is a poor substitute for wholeness, a pitiful one even, that always leaves him feeling hollower than before. But it is a good distraction.

They move together, and soon Sebastian eases in. Ciel keeps his head down, or his arm up, as he rides him, grimacing and gasping and bucking and shuddering through it, teeth gritted behind the cover of his lips. He digs his nails into Sebastian’s flesh and leaves trails like rubies all down his stomach. Sebastian’s hands on his hips grip him hard enough that Ciel can feel them aching already, the flesh swelling bitter and purple and blue.

Sebastian helps his little lord—he guides his movement, penetrates as deep as his body will allow. The physical pleasure is no different for him, as far as he is aware, than it would be for any human man with a really human body, but it is not enough. The slick of sweat and saliva and oil, the sublime heat—the barest taste of the little soul writhing on top of him. Delicious, oh, delectable, but not enough.

“ _Yes_ ,” Ciel hisses, his head tossed back so Sebastian cannot see.

* * *

Sebastian watches him, enrapt, in the cold blue night-light seeping in from the windows, beneath the curtains. It is tinged with an eerie violet with Ciel’s eyes open. Sebastian reaches up to cup his cheek, but the boy wrenches away, gingerly climbing off of him and collapsing in a heap beside him.

Ciel curls into himself in a loose approximation of the fetal position, his back to Sebastian. He is sore and sweaty and filthy again—as filthy as he has ever been since he was dragged from his nursery into _the real world_. He shuts his eyes as Sebastian approaches and hovers over him, predatory, his arms on either side of him, holding him as captive as the cage. Ciel turns to lay prostrate under him: _If I can’t see you, you can’t see me._ But Sebastian defies that notion, as he does with all others Ciel tries to apply to him; and Ciel feels kisses pepper his shoulders and make their way down to the small of his back, where they turn into languid, worshipful licks.

Ciel’s skin is brackish and fevered, in stark contrast with—beneath the layers of flesh, of organs and blood, within and without and entwined with the tiniest of his cells, in his DNA—what very little Sebastian can taste of his soul, sweet and cool with confusion and misery.

Sebastian shivers against the solidness of him, against the very real human body Ciel possesses. He swallows, and thinks of biting in _now_ , but he does not. It is true that this boy’s soul has an intrinsic beauty—a remarkable virginal purity which he has not seen anywhere else at any time in his many years, so innocent and easily influenced with the right tricks. It reminds him constantly of its own potential: for some reason Sebastian cannot quite pin down, no matter how much Ciel Phantomhive is harmed or sullied, no matter what anyone does or has done to him, no matter what sins he commits, his soul remains dazzlingly white and clean—which is at amusing odds with the feelings he radiates now. So Sebastian cannot have it now; he must remember his contract, and his control.

“Hey,” Ciel says hoarsely, arching defensively at the feel of Sebastian’s tongue on his lower back. “Don’t.” He tries to sit up and turn over again, but Sebastian pushes him back down, a hand at the base of his neck, and holds him there. Another kiss, this one pressed to his tail bone. “ _Sebastian._ ”

“Yes?”

Sebastian’s breath is hot against his skin, and it makes Ciel squirm. Into his pillow he says, “Let me up this instant.”

“Is that an order?”

Ciel lifts his head, a little awkwardly, from the pillow and rests his chin on it. In the next moment Sebastian’s long-fingered hand slides up his neck and into his hair, and he shudders out a sigh as Sebstian strokes through it gently. He might call it affectionate if he were not so keenly aware of _what_ exactly it is petting him right now. Even in moments of genuine pleasure, he would not—consciously—let himself fall into _that_ trap. “I shouldn’t have to _order_ you. What are you, a dog?”

Sebastian moves up the length of his body again until his hand falls away and is replaced by the fleshy, perfect curve of his nose. And Sebastian murmurs into his hair, breathing deeply though Ciel has never supposed that to be necessary for him. “You know how I loathe dogs,” he says. For a moment, Ciel wonders if he should not order him away—just in case. But when the demon speaks again, his voice is softer. “Come, young master. Relax.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Ciel mutters.

Sebastian chuckles into his hair. He manipulates him with gentle caresses and kisses to his ear until he’s turned over onto his back, and he is beautiful with his damp naked skin and delicate bones, scars and the mark of the contract and all. He is ever-careful not to broach the subject, but he cannot help wondering what exactly that cult had done to Ciel—how precisely they had used him to shatter him so thoroughly, when he is so unusually resilient for a human.

They had not been gentle like this, Ciel recalls, as Sebastian’s hand runs down his side, then his thigh, until it reaches his knee. Ciel bends it and sets his foot down flat, and rolls his shoulders back against the pillows and hears them crack. “Sebastian,” he sighs, “I want to sleep.”

“Then allow me to assist,” Sebastian replies.

Sebastian runs his thumb along Ciel’s lower lip, pushing it past them to his teeth. Normally his master is not fond of this, but Sebastian is acutely aware of everything Ciel is and does, and he knows he hasn’t the energy to resist. It is for _his_ good—he will sleep better tonight, he will have fewer nightmares if Sebastian pushes him to his limit. “If you would do me the honour.”

Ciel is as reluctantly compliant as Sebastian thought he would be: he makes a face, as though he is disgusted—although he was the one who started all of this—but he steels himself in another moment. He listens, opening his mouth and sucking on the two fingers Sebastian replaces his thumb with dutifully, until Sebastian decides that this, at least, is enough and withdraws them. A string of saliva connects them for one second, and snaps in the next. The demon smiles down at him, closed-eyed, as he wipes his fingers dry on the inside of Ciel’s thigh. Ciel cringes suppressedly.

Sebastian lifts Ciel’s hips for him.

* * *

Ciel is exhausted by the time it’s over and Sebastian has cleaned the both of them up. And at least for now, it is quiet except the sound of his own breathing: his butler is silent, like a heavy shadow beside him in the bed.

His eyes sore and hot still, he stares at the ceiling for a little while—for less time than it seems, more than likely—then lets his head loll to the side, toward the window. A deep ache is creeping up the back of his neck and into his skull. The heavy curtains are drawn over the window, but there is just enough moonlight, even if he closes his right eye, to see the patterns of the carpet on the floor, the shape of the bedside table, the drawers that run down its front. Their handles, like little door-knockers, do not gleam at all in their ration of light.

This room had belonged to his parents before all of this. Ciel thinks Sebastian knows that as well, knew it when he restored it, beyond just the fact of its being the master bedroom. There must have been some trace of their existence here, he thinks, besides the ashes. And although this is not really the bed that they had slept in, nor they pillows they used, Ciel feels his stomach twist with a depraved relief that at least they are not here to see all of this. At least they cannot know.

Sebastian sits up, a man emerging out of darkness, and Ciel turns to look, his attention unwittingly caught. He is on the floor suddenly, looking perfectly made up, as if he hadn’t just spent a significant amount of time further debauching someone.

“Is my little lord satisfied?” he asks as he bends at the waist, his posture inhumanly straight, and smooths the sheets and covers where he had lain. His hands are still bare, the contract mark like a rotted tattoo on the back of his left.

“My clothes,” Ciel rasps instead of answering that. He pulls himself up onto his elbows, dazed.

Sebastian leisurely walks to the other side of the bed—he is slinking, really, like a cat toward its prey. He collects the clothing and stands straight. “Here, young master,” he says, quite innocently. When Ciel sits at the edge of the mattress, he drops the shirt back over his head, and then kneels to help him back into his underwear. If he moved any closer he could rub his cheek against his master’s boyish knee, but instead he tips his head back to look up at him.

Ciel is staring down at him with his glassy mismatched gaze. He does not look haughty or arrogant for once: he looks only like the child he is and tries so hard not to be, and overtired, lethargic.

“My lord,” Sebastian says. He doesn’t smile; Ciel’s expression tells him that he isn’t listening anyway. “Is something the matter?”

Ciel closes his eyes and shakes his head, and when he opens them again he looks _at_ Sebastian, instead of through him. “What,” and then, “nothing. I’m tired. Go away.”

“You do not wish for me to stay until you fall asleep?”

“No.” Ciel brings his legs up onto the bed with him again and lays down, facing away from Sebastian, on his side. Normally he sleeps on his back. “I have no need of being babied.”

Sebastian nods, although Ciel won’t see it, and rises. He straightens the sheets and tucks him in; he passes his hand over his master’s head, which is mostly dry now. In response, Ciel burrows deeper into his bed, his shoulders up to his ears, and pulls his blankets closer.

* * *

Ciel sits up in his bed when he is alone. He cannot get the image of that room with its huge pentagram carved into the floor, everywhere stained with blood, out of his head, or the deluge of memories and the humiliation that follow it. It makes his heart race to think of it, and his palms sweaty, and the harder he tries to forget, the more it pushes itself to the front of his mind. Healing was never part of the plan—if anything, he reminds himself, this is all just another reason to obtain revenge—but neither was finding himself back in the middle of 'that month' when he was supposed to have escaped.

And his skin feels seared, like it felt when _they_ branded him, only it is everywhere Sebastian has touched him. He knows it is bearable, because he has to be able to bear it: he couldn’t slip out of his skin like a snake, even if he wanted to.

Ciel does not sleep; or at least he doesn’t realise when he does. He does not dream. The sun rises meanwhile, and he feels heavy as a brick when Sebastian wakes him.

It does not seem right that another day should have come, but the events of the previous night do not seem true either. It is only when he sees everything smashed to bits downstairs that he remembers everything is, undoubtedly, real.


End file.
